Manhood for Amateurs - Large Print by Michael Chabon (Paperback)

About the Book

"Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Wondrous, wise and beautiful." -- David Kamp, New York Times Book Review

The bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Werewolves in Their Youth, Wonderboys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon "takes [his] brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze and turns it on his own life" (Time) in the New York Times bestselling memoir Manhood for Amateurs.

Book Synopsis

"Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality."
-- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Wondrous, wise and beautiful."
-- David Kamp, New York Times Book Review

The bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Werewolves in Their Youth, Wonderboys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon "takes [his] brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze and turns it on his own life" (Time) in the New York Times bestselling memoir Manhood for Amateurs.

From the Back Cover

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author-- "an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)--offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction.

A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.

What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as--simply because--it goes on being written every day. As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as the father of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme played--on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key--by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.

At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.

Review Quotes

"Probably the premier prose stylist--the Updike--of his generation." - Lev Grossman, Time magazine
"Chabon is a flat-out wonderful writer--evocative and inventive, pointed and poignant." - Chicago Tribune
"His work is page-turning and poignant; he is one of the best writers of English prose alive. . . . He wants to move and thrill us both, and he does." - Elizabeth McCracken, Washington Post Book World
"Chabon's language is incandescent." - Brian Braiker, Newsweek
"A prose magician, Chabon is that rare literary anomaly: a gentle-spirited writer of boundless ambition." - Andrew Lewis Conn, Village Voice
"Chabon brings his prodigiously entertaining verbal intelligence to a very personal investigation of what it means to be a father, a son, and a husband." - Lev Grossman, Time (Top 10 Nonfiction Books Citation)
"The odds say we're surely approaching a tipping point for this stuff [Daddy literature]--but, alas, by the grace of Chabon's glittering prose, it's not here yet.... Both entertaining and thoughtful.... Stories that readers will recognize as a common experience are blessed with some added verve by a supremely talented writer.... Stands out for a laudable lack of over sharing as well as Chabon's characteristic zaniness.... As long as dads keep writing like this, we'll keep reading." - Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press
"Lovely." - Katy Read, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Word for word, sentence for sentence, Michael Chabon could be the best American writer of his generation. If we're measuring a writer by the sheer ability to construct beautiful sentences, the kinds that employ great emotional poignancy and tremendous lyrical rhythm, Chabon has no equal." - Adam de Jong, Louisville Courier Journal
"Chabon takes the same brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze that won him a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and turns it on his own life as a committed husband and father, Lego enthusiast and unrepentant nerd-in short, as a man." - Time magazine
"Michael Chabon brings the most varied and fabulous scenarios alive through his fiction. . . . It's a gift to find that his writing is just as radiant, original, and observant when trained on his own life." - Rebekah Denn, Christian Science Monitor
"Insightful and highly entertaining." - Jed Lipinski, Salon
"Thoughtful, perceptive. . . . All propelled by the shimmering prose that won him the Pulitzer Prize." - Michael Lindgren, Washington Post
"Ultimately understood in terms of the tension between Chabon's alternating embrace of an archetypally male role and his alienation from it. That, basically, is (post)modern life, and Chabon might just be one of its most able chroniclers. . . . Chabon has been called 'his generation's Updike, ' but in contrast to Updike's disappointing attitude toward women, Chabon's feminism is smart and never feels coached." - Pete Coco, Time Out Chicago
"A treasure chest of articulated observations and elegantly wrought conclusions about an array of subjects that sorely needed his attentions. Those of his fans who've craved for the moment when Chabon turned his immaculate eye back to the world we share can now rejoice.... As always, Chabon's sentences are pure joy to consume." - Emily Simon, The Buffalo News
"Alternately serious and whimsical, the book offers fascinating insights into what makes the author tick. It is also a probing look at contemporary society." - William Porter, Denver Post
"Wry and heartfelt, Chabon's riffs uncover brand-new insights in even the most quotidian subjects. . . . He applies an unusual level of wit and candor to the form." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A brilliant American writer." - Michelle Locke, Associated Press